Original "Toasty Ale" Recipe: Need Feedback

[drubes14]

Hey all - trying to make a toast/nut/biscuit/bread-heavy beer, balanced with a citrus-forward, late addition hop profile. Just using a touch of summit for balance, and then a good amount of lemondrop for late additions.

Ideally it would have that toasted malt profile as a primary, and then the hops would come through more as a secondary flavor. Any thoughts or feedback on the below would be much appreciated!

"Toasted Ale"
Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Est Original Gravity: 1.053 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.013 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.2 %
Bitterness: 23.3 IBUs
Est Color: 8.7 SRM

Grain Bill
8 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) - 76.20%
2 lbs Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM) - 14.20%
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) - 4.80%
8.0 oz Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) - 4.80%

Mash at 152 for 1 hour, sparge at 170.

Hops
0.20 oz Summit [17.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min 11.5 IBUs
0.50 oz Lemondrop [6.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min 5.0 IBUs
1.00 oz Lemondrop [6.00 %] - Boil 2.0 min 1.7 IBUs
0.50 oz Lemondrop [6.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 60.0 min 5.1 IBUs

Yeast
WLP001 American Ale Yeast

 

[Br3w4u]

I think it looks good. You could try adding a little home toasted grains too. There are plenty of threads on how to toast grains in the oven.

 

[Br3w4u]

The half ounce whirlpool addition probably wouldn’t do much. You might need about 2 oz. at least and whirlpool around 180 to limit bitterness.

 

[drubes14]

Would you recommend moving it all to whirlpool then?

 

[Br3w4u]

Yeah you could do that.

 

[Br3w4u]

Here is a recipe I made. Even with the 6 oz. of hops I added my calculated IBU was pretty low and it doesn’t even taste as bitter as you would think a ~50 IBU beer would taste. If you whirlpool at that 180 range you wouldn’t count any IBU extraction in your calculations. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/comet-session-ipa.638750/#post-8163831

 

[Azura]

2# of biscuit presumably Belgian biscuit is not really toasty. It's more like a freshly baked biscuit. Victory is basically biscuit that produces a little more toast than Belgian. Special Roast is Victory, but more toasty. If you use more than 1# it tastes like toasted sour dough bread. To complete the toast flavor, you need some burnt toast. Midnight Wheat.

So I will recommend subbing 2# of biscuit for 1# of Victory, 8oz of Special Roast and 3oz of Midnight Wheat. Swap some base malt for Vienna to make up the difference.

 

[Br3w4u]

In my experience biscuit doesn’t taste anything like biscuits, more like stale cookies?

 

[Br3w4u]

Just to clarify when I said stale cookies I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I mean like the difference between a freshly baked cookie and like a biscotti. When I imagine the recipe you have I think of a sweet lemony cookie. Sounds good to me but yeah not toasty.....

 

[Br3w4u]

So did you decide on a final recipe? I am interested to see how it turns out. If you brew it post an update with some notes because I think I would like to try it with some experimental tangerine hops that I have.

 

[drubes14]

I did brew it! I ended up adding in 2 oz of midnight wheat on top of the original grain bill. The color was much darker than I had hoped for... prob SRM 17-19 vs. the SRM 14 that Beersmith spit out with the midnight wheat addition.

Ideally I want this to be a house brew, so I plan on rebrewing soon. I'll probably do it without the midnight wheat next. At 2 oz, I don't think I got much flavor contribution anyway.

I ended up adjusting the hop additions slightly, going for .2 oz Summit @ 60, 1 oz Lemondrop at 5 min, and 1 oz for whirlpool from 190 to about 180... about 20 minutes (just whirlpooling, no cooling, as I have an external CFC).

It's fermenting now, and I will be doing a taste test tonight, but on first sip of the wort, it was really nice. A toasty, nutty, bready, slightly biscuity flavor profile with very little perceived bitterness, finishing with a nice lemony aftertaste from the hops. The nose is similar to a lemon cookie - you were right on that.

I think my water additions also helped minimize any perceived bitterness - my final sulfate to chloride ratio was .82.

Also of note - I can usually differentiate biscuit malt in a grain bill fairly distinctly, but in this case it was well balanced in with the munich, even at 2 lb.

I'll post photos in a few days once it clears up! Let me know when you plan on brewing, @Br3w4u .

 

[Br3w4u]

I did brew it! I ended up adding in 2 oz of midnight wheat on top of the original grain bill. The color was much darker than I had hoped for... prob SRM 17-19 vs. the SRM 14 that Beersmith spit out with the midnight wheat addition.

Ideally I want this to be a house brew, so I plan on rebrewing soon. I'll probably do it without the midnight wheat next. At 2 oz, I don't think I got much flavor contribution anyway.

I ended up adjusting the hop additions slightly, going for .2 oz Summit @ 60, 1 oz Lemondrop at 5 min, and 1 oz for whirlpool from 190 to about 180... about 20 minutes (just whirlpooling, no cooling, as I have an external CFC).

It's fermenting now, and I will be doing a taste test tonight, but on first sip of the wort, it was really nice. A toasty, nutty, bready, slightly biscuity flavor profile with very little perceived bitterness, finishing with a nice lemony aftertaste from the hops. The nose is similar to a lemon cookie - you were right on that.

I think my water additions also helped minimize any perceived bitterness - my final sulfate to chloride ratio was .82.

Also of note - I can usually differentiate biscuit malt in a grain bill fairly distinctly, but in this case it was well balanced in with the munich, even at 2 lb.

I'll post photos in a few days once it clears up! Let me know when you plan on brewing, @Br3w4u .

Awesome! I will be brewing a Belgian wit this week but as soon as it finishes fermentation I will be trying out this recipe. What water profile did you go with?

 

[drubes14]

So this is what I went with. Existing water profile is for Washington, DC.

The mash and sparge volumes are a bit higher than they should be because it is accounting for a relatively high amount of deadspace in both my HLT and mash tun. I think I leave about a cumulative gallon behind between the two of em.

 

[drubes14]

Status report: overall, very mild malt profile. The beer finished around 1.011. Just slightly toasty, but honestly not as much character as I was hoping for. Next time I might try to replace more of the base malt with Munich20 to ramp up the "breadiness", as well as ramp up the mashing by 1-2 degrees to get a bit more body into the beer.

The hopping was also unique. very little hop bitterness at all, though a nice lemony sour edge that did end up combining into a sort of lemon biscotti flavor. very interesting.

I might end up dry hopping this one with more lemondrop to play that flavor out if i can. Pics to come.

 

[Br3w4u]

Lemon biscotti...how did I guess. Sounds good. I am waiting on my fermentation vessel to get freed up and I will try this out. I think I will try adding some home toasted grains.

 

[Br3w4u]

I don’t want to get too far off from your original recipe just trying to build on it but how does this sound?
8#marris otter
1#biscuit
1#home made toasted 2 row
8oz. Crystal 10
8oz. Munich

Do you think I should add more Munich?

 

[drubes14]

Looks good to me. I'd add in a bit more Munich 20. I think it adds a nice characteristic. As I said in my earlier post too, I might mash a touch higher, maybe 154.

 

[Br3w4u]

What about the hop profile? Would you change anything about it? More bitterness? Different flavor/aroma hop?

 

[drubes14]

Yeah, the flavor component of the lemon drop is nice, might add a bit more or move the whirlpool to boil.

I'd also add in some more bittering hops. Something to get 20 ibus or so would probably be right.

 

[deadwolfbones]

@Br3w4u You know "biscuits" in the UK/EU are what we call cookies over here, right?

 

[Br3w4u]

@Br3w4u You know "biscuits" in the UK/EU are what we call cookies over here, right?

I didn’t know that. I wonder if biscuit malt originated in the UK.

 

[Br3w4u]

What do you think about using an English ale yeast? Might make it more malty and I think it would classify as a mild.

 

[Br3w4u]

According to brewers friend WLP002 would finish .006 points higher than WLP001 which should give the beer more body and some residual sweetness but still should make a clean and clear beer.

 

[Br3w4u]

So I tried the home toasted grains and they smelled great and made the wort smell good but I didn’t notice any contribution to the flavor. If you try it I would do 2 pounds. I also found that toasting at 275 for about 30 minutes got the best results. Might go a little longer next time and be sure to stir them about every 10 min so they don’t burn. I tried 350 degrees and they got a little burnt after just 10 min.

 

[drubes14]

Good call on the english ale yeast. I've had some great look recently with WLP005 and have some washed and ready to go. next batch i'll do the english strain.

what did you end up doing in terms of your hop schedule?

going to dry hop mine with some lemondrop, i think, but when i take a stab again, i'm going to further try and emphasize the toasted malt profile.

 

[Br3w4u]

Good call on the english ale yeast. I've had some great look recently with WLP005 and have some washed and ready to go. next batch i'll do the english strain.

what did you end up doing in terms of your hop schedule?

going to dry hop mine with some lemondrop, i think, but when i take a stab again, i'm going to further try and emphasize the toasted malt profile.

I used .20 oz of Hercules at 60 min
.25 oz of Hercules at 15 min
2 oz of experimental tangerine at flameout with a 20 min hop stand.
Brewers friend estimates 37 IBU but I think it will be much less. The wort wasn’t bitter at all and was very tasty. I also estimated my OG should have been 1.057 but I ended up with 1.042 so that kinda sucked but oh well. I blame my LHBS mill. My next upgrade will be a mill.

 

[Br3w4u]

I wanted to use lemondrop just to stay closer to your original recipe but my LHBS doesn’t carry lemondrop so I just used what I had. Next time I will order some.

 

[Br3w4u]

I wonder if home toasted wheat would taste more toast like than barley.

 

[drubes14]

It could, yeah. might also improve some of the body issues that my first batch had.

what did you do for your mash schedule? also, did you pitch WLP001 or WLP002?

 

[drubes14]

I plan on kegging tonight, btw. Still torn on dry hopping.